Historical overview

Founding document

Formed

Dissolved

The United Colonies of Kobol, also known as the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, was an interplanetary state which represented humanity during the First Cylon War, and was dissolved upon the settling of the second Earth nearly sixty years later.

Contents

The United Colonies is in certain ways a successor to the Colonial Government, an interplanetary union that emerged following the demise of the Virgon and Leonese empires. The United Colonies of Kobol itself was formed around the year 1948 in the Articles of Colonization, wherein the twelve independent planetary states - dubbed the "Twelve Worlds" - were unified as a single state to better coordinate the military and industry towards fighting the Cylon War. Rather than planets be recognised as colonies of the more powerful planetary states such as Caprica, the twelve were regarded as colonies of Kobol. Each planet continued to have small elements of sovereignty, such as preserving their own legal systems.

After twelve years of war, the government signed an armistice agreement with the Cylons, ending the war on a stalemate and seeing the establishment of a demilitarised border between human and Cylon-controlled space. Little is known of colonial history over the next forty years until the Presidency of Richard Adar, a Caprican who's administration became known for massive-scale militarisation brought on by fear of a hypothesised Cylon invasion. Government investing in Dr. Gaius Baltar's Command Navigation Program ultimately led to their downfall, when Cylon agents became aware of the research and directly influenced the writing of algorithms to allow it to be infiltrated. During the Fall of the Twelve Colonies, nearly the entire navy and their air defences were disabled through these networked commands, and a Cylon orbital strike team was able to destroy each planet's population centres through nuclear bombardment.

The United Colonies worked as a federation. At the top was the President, who presided over the Quorum, a house of twelve delegates each elected by citizens of their respective colony. As there were more than twelve inhabited planets, such as Hibernia, it is unknown in what way the Quorum represented their wishes.